


we all start with innocence, but the world leads us to guilt

by odditycurator



Category: Dishonored (Video Game)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-30
Updated: 2012-12-30
Packaged: 2017-11-23 00:41:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 898
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/616153
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/odditycurator/pseuds/odditycurator





	we all start with innocence, but the world leads us to guilt

She is clutching the windowsill, white-knuckled, and the gunshots are still ringing in her ears when she hears the click of his boots on the floor behind her.  
  
“It must  _bother_  you,” he says, “continually being  _underestimated_.”  
  
Cecelia whirls, heart in her throat, and she expects to see an Overseer or a guard or even Martin. The man in the room with her is none of them.  
  
The light in the room is dim and scattered, but it is not at all dark enough to explain the way his eyes are impossibly black, or the way the air around his shoulders seems  _thick_. His shadow is strange, uneven, inconsistent- and when she tries to look, it swallows her eyes.

“Apologies,” he says, mildly. “I didn’t mean to startle you.” He wears the clothes of a commoner. Like her.  
  
She is still  _processing_ , deciding whether to run or scream or stay, when he continues without her.  
  
“All your life, you’ve been insignificant,” and his voice is not at all cruel, like she might expect. “You were born under the shabby tenement roof of a  _peasant_ , and as with so many others like you, no one has ever bothered to notice how you could be  _better_.”  
  
The Outsider’s eyes are  _so black_ , but they look on her with a strange sort of kindness. He laces his hands behind his back, and nods in the direction of the pub. “Although being unseen has its benefits, does it not?”  
  
Cecelia glances out the window again. The street is empty. Indistinct voices echo from the yard. She nods, faintly.  
  
“You see and hear things no one else does. You pass as a shadow, an irrelevant servant. You have gone ignored, unnoticed, and it has occurred to no one that you could be of consequence.  
  
“You are  _invisible_.”  
  
She remembers her mother- weathered, tired, her work clothes faded- telling her of the man with black eyes, his tricks and schemes and deception. The power he offered. The way the oppressed and downtrodden collected his runes, built his shrines. The way they fought back. The way they were  _burned_  for it.  
  
She remembers how her mother had placed the little pocketbook of Strictures in her hands, leatherbound and worn and beaten, and whispered that she must remember. For her own good.   
  
She remembers Wallace, and Treavor, and Havelock, and a hundred others before them, and a long history of bottles thrown at her head, insults hurled at her back, lecherous stares levelled at her chest.  
  
And she is frustrated, then, that he is making so much sense.  
  
The Outsider cocks his head to the side, slightly, eyebrows raised. “Am I wrong?”  
  
“No,” Cecelia says. “You aren’t.”  
  
He pauses, and licks his lips, and something pulls faintly at the corners of his mouth.  
  
“Perhaps we should  _fix_  that.”  
  
(and she remembers when the Overseer came to her door, because the Outsider’s mark was no longer permitted to be displayed by the general public, in art or in books or on clothing or anything else, and she touched the little book of Strictures in her pocket and recited in her mind as he went through her things)  
  
And she laughs, bitterly, as she takes a step towards him, and he regards her with interest as he begins to reach for her hand.  
  
“You can put a mark on my  _face_  for all I care,” she says, and she cannot help the sharpness in her voice, and she is tired of being _quiet and meek_. “It’s not like anyone would notice.”  
  
The Outsider stops. He looks at her, and the faint smile on his face widens- just a little- and he lets her hand drop.  
  
(and she looks him in the eyes and they are  _so black_ , they are  _holes_ , and she does not shake or tremble)  
  
And then he is touching two fingers to her neck, just barely  
  
and everything around her  _howls_  and  _quakes_  and her blood sings  
  
and when the world has rearranged itself, and the seams have been realigned   
  
when her vision returns and she is crouched on the floor and wiping the blood from her nose- she can feel the white-hot lines of a mark on the side of her neck, just over her pulse.  
  
It feels like fire and light and fury. Vibrant. It feels right.  
  
The Outsider waits, patiently, as Cecelia gets to her feet. When she is standing upright, he reaches into his pocket. “One last thing for you.”   
  
He takes her hand again and puts something on her palm- she feels cold metal and what is perhaps bone- and when he closes her fingers over it, he clasps her hand in both of his and gazes through her.  
  
“My dear Cecelia,” he says.  
  
“ _Make them notice._ ”  
  
And then, in the blink of an eye, he is gone.  
  
When she opens her hand, she finds a pendant. Carved whalebone, accented with wire and beads, on a silver chain. The once-sharp edges are smooth and worn, and the lines of the runes have been re-carved countless times.  
  
Cecelia peers out the window- just to make sure there is still no one coming- and fastens the pendant around her neck, callused fingers working at the clasp.  
  
And when the clasp is closed and it hangs against her collarbone, she sees that she has vanished, as if she were never there at all.


End file.
